Reach out and touch someone

In 1820, the Chinese economy was - relatively - big.  Martin Wolf illustrated a column on Europe Tuesday with this figure, based on the work of Angus Maddison:

(Look who else is up there in 1700 and 1820).  But what happened inside it didn't have much of an impact outside.

Not so anymore.  When did it really come home to FT journalist James Kynge that China Shakes the World :

...in the several weeks beginning in mid-February 2004, when, slowly at first but with mounting velocity, manhole covers started to disappear from roads and pavements around the world.

As Chinese demand drove up the price of scrap metal to record levels, thieves almost everywhere had the same idea.  As darkness fell, they levered up the iron covers and sold them to local merchants, who cut them up and loaded them onto ships to China.  The first displacements were felt in Taiwan, the island just off China's southeast coast.  The next were in other neighbors such as Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan.  Soon the gravitational pull of a resurgent "Middle Kingdom" (or Zhongguo, the Mandarin name for China) was reaching the farthest places.  Whereever the sun set, pilferers worked to satisfy China's hunger.  More than 150 covers disappeared during one month in Chicago.  Scotland's "great drain robbery" saw more than a hundred vanish in a few days.  From Montreal to Kuala Lumpur, unsuspecting pedestrians stumbled into holes.